Results for “policing rap authenticity”

Songs

Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It

Ice Cube

Ice Cube uses the media's stock accusation that gangsta rap 'causes' violence as a satirical device, exaggerating the charge…

media scapegoating and moral panic authenticity vs commercial gatekeeping black masculinity and self-reliance

Sweet

Common

"Sweet" is Common's confrontational rebuttal to the softer, more romantic image he'd cultivated on prior albums, delivered as a…

reclaiming masculinity/toughness hip-hop legacy and authenticity boasting and self-mythologizing

Karma Police

Radiohead

A speaker invokes a childhood fantasy of cosmic justice to punish people who irritate him, then realizes partway through that…

petty vindictiveness corporate/institutional conformity self-recognition and guilt

Ali Rap Theme

Public Enemy

This Public Enemy track functions as a tribute-mixtape theme, weaving Muhammad Ali's own boasts and cadences into Chuck D's…

Black pride and self-definition resistance to state power sports as political theater

Listen!!!

Talib Kweli

A hyper-percussive showcase track built almost entirely around the command to "listen," using that word as both hook and thesis:…

attention and distraction authenticity vs. commercial rap self-assertion of skill

Rapp Snitch Knishes

MF DOOM

MF DOOM turns a satirical eye on rap's tough-guy posturing, mocking MCs whose lyrics function as confessions that could be used…

hip-hop authenticity and posturing self-incrimination and surveillance street credibility vs. performance

Above the Clouds

Gang Starr

A cosmic-flight framing device gives way to two verses of dense, mystically-inflected boasting in which Guru and an MC (the…

spiritual elevation vs. street corruption Five Percenter cosmology and self-divinity lyrical supremacy as warfare

squabble up

Kendrick Lamar

A high-velocity West Coast flex track that turns a slang term for confrontation into a chant, stacking boasts about money, sex…

street credibility and violence wealth and material excess authenticity vs. performance in rap

Backwoods Barbie

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton uses her own famously exaggerated image as the subject of a plainspoken self-defense, arguing that artifice and…

appearance vs. substance class and self-invention self-defense against stereotype

Doomsday

MF DOOM

The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…

reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap

In the Mood

Talib Kweli

A loose-limbed party track built around braggadocio and seduction, where Talib Kweli shifts between flirtatious come-ons, boasts…

seduction and courtship artistic superiority authenticity vs. performance

Stuff That Works

Guy Clark

Guy Clark builds a plainspoken inventory of worn, dependable objects and people, using them as a working definition of value…

durability vs novelty authenticity friendship and loyalty

History Lesson, Pt. 2

Minutemen

A punk band's origin story told without irony or distance, this song insists that ordinary friendship and local geography are as…

friendship and collaboration punk rock lineage and influence self-mythologizing vs. humility

Bad Mouth

Fugazi

A short, hammering post-hardcore sermon aimed at hypocrisy and inertia, built almost entirely on one refrain that refuses the…

hypocrisy authenticity stagnation vs. change

They Don't Care About Us

Michael Jackson

A protest chant built almost entirely from one repeated grievance, this song stacks fragmented images of police violence, media…

police brutality institutional neglect racial injustice

Me Myself and I

De La Soul

De La Soul use a mirror-gazing conceit to push back against critics and industry types who wanted to pigeonhole them as hippies…

individuality vs. conformity authenticity in art resistance to stereotyping

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl

Broken Social Scene

A brief, mantra-like lament for someone who has traded rebellious authenticity for polish and distance, sung by a narrator who…

nostalgia for authenticity loss of innocence desire and longing

X Offender

Blondie

Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…

desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance

Midnight Special

Lead Belly

A prison work-song built around the recurring image of a train's headlight sweeping across a cell, used as both literal detail…

incarceration longing for freedom surveillance and policing

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

So Low

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli uses the physical sensation of depth—gravity, fire, ice, the ocean floor—as a metaphor for both emotional lows and…

authenticity vs. celebrity struggle and resilience artistic integrity

ATLiens

OutKast

A two-verse-plus-hook showcase where Big Boi and André 3000 each stake out their identity as outsiders within their own city and…

regional pride and specificity outsider/alien identity self-improvement and discipline

Go to Church

Ice Cube

A crunk-era posse cut in which Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg trade boasts built around a single taunt: prove your toughness or admit…

performative masculinity authenticity vs. fraudulence street credibility

Full Clip

Gang Starr

Full Clip is a boastful, aggressive posse-cut-style anthem in which Guru delivers a barrage of battle-rap threats, positioning…

braggadocio and dominance authenticity vs. imitation violence as metaphor for skill

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

Pneumonia

Danny Brown

Pneumonia is a hard, boastful posse-cut-style track from Atrocity Exhibition that trades in rapid-fire flexing about money,…

excess and indulgence hustler bravado sexual conquest

Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend

A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…

class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

Not Like Us

Kendrick Lamar

A West Coast diss track that turns a specific rap beef into a broader indictment of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and…

cultural authenticity vs. appropriation predatory behavior and exploitation regional pride (West Coast/Compton)

Moment of Truth

Gang Starr

Gang Starr's title track is a meditation on accountability and betrayal dressed as street philosophy, moving from meditative…

betrayal and loyalty accountability/karma paranoia at success

Ghetto Dreams

Common

Common builds a composite fantasy of a woman who fuses hood authenticity with high-end glamour, verse by verse assembling and…

idealized femininity as class fantasy hood authenticity versus upward mobility female strength shadowed by objectification

One Beer

MF DOOM

A boozy, freewheeling posse-cut of a track built on the pun of "one beer" doubling as "one beer left" and a coded jab at fake…

intoxication as metaphor for scarcity/competition hip-hop authenticity vs. imitation supervillain persona

People Say

Wu‐Tang Clan

This is a posse-cut style Wu-Tang track where multiple MCs trade dense, boastful verses about street history, criminal résumé,…

street survival and generational crime materialism and excess lyrical supremacy/battle rap bravado

Darryl and Joe (Krush-Groove 3)

Run-DMC

This is Run-DMC's self-introduction track, a boastful roll call in which each member states his name, role, and superiority in…

self-naming and identity boasting and status group unity vs individual flash

Politician Man

Betty Davis

A raw funk vamp that turns the language of politics into an extended sexual come-on, with Davis playing a swaggering seductress…

sexual power and control satire of political rhetoric female sexual agency

What's Going On

Donny Hathaway

This is Donny Hathaway's live cover of Marvin Gaye's landmark 1971 protest song, delivered in the intimate, vamping style of his…

social unrest police brutality generational conflict

The Real Me

The Who

An opening track that functions as a diagnostic scream: a young man cycles through the authority figures meant to know him —…

identity and authenticity institutional failure (medicine, family, religion) alienation

Really Doe

Danny Brown

A three-part posse-cut style flex track (featuring Ab-Soul and Kendrick Lamar on the full version, though only Danny Brown's…

success and its authenticity hedonism as armor class ascension from poverty